


Fundamentals of Muscle Drawing

by MissRedBean



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: I am not ashamed of myself, M/M, Shiro’s muscles worship, animator Keith, animator Lance, shklance - Freeform, so I told myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 03:14:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9415652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissRedBean/pseuds/MissRedBean
Summary: Keith and Lance were Altea Studio’s lead animators. However, they have one fatal flaw: the lack of proper anatomy knowledge. So Allura sent the two to learn under the great master, Takashi Shirogane. Keith and Lance went, grumbling and protesting, never knowing what awaited them in the humble looking art school.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It was a hard choice between Lance POV and Keith POV, but I decided Keith’s reaction was funnier if it was seen in Lance’s POV. Enjoy 1,813 words of shameless muscle worship.

It was winter.

Correction, it was winter and the heater was not working.

Lance kept rubbing his hands together while Keith breathed into his palms to warm his cold cheeks. The only thing that kept them from grating each other’s nerves as usual was their mutual dislike on Allura’s order. Seriously, they were already on the sixth episode on the Voltron reboot animation and Allura wanted them to fix their glaring anatomy mistake only now. To be fair, her months of sickness didn’t let her check the work until now (and Coran was quite lax in quality checking), but it was still embarrassing and hurt to hearing your drawings called as “eyesore” in front of everyone else.

Coming here hadn’t been easy either. The school, _Art Champion_ , was located in less popular area and they still need to walk fifteen minutes after taking the bus—in the middle of snowstorm. All in all, both Lance and Keith were now too tired and grumpy to start a fact.

“This guy better be as good as she said,” Lance commented once the silence became too much.

Keith grunted in agreement. Lance never thought his rival’s expression could be any colder, but he was wrong.

The clock struck four and the door opened. Both animators turned their head as their teacher entered the room. Lance couldn’t help but stare and swallow a _Dios mio_ down. Their teacher, Takashi Shirogane according to the flyer, was a very good looking man. Not just better than average, but super model class good looking. Tall, handsome, symmetrical features, and probably very well built under that thick winter coat—oh, and oh, plus that kind smile he was wearing now.

Suddenly that fifteen minutes of braving snow storm in the peak of winter seemed worth it.

“Hi, sorry for the wait and thank you for coming to the ‘Fundamentals of Muscle Drawing’ class. My name is Takashi Shirogane and you call me Shiro. I didn’t think there will be a class since many cancelled today, but still, I’m glad you two came.”

“Lance McClaine. It was no problem at all,” Lance blurted out before he could stop himself. Why did he introduce himself?? Shiro didn’t ask him too!

Thankfully, his eternal rival made the same mistake.

“Keith Kogane. We are on time pressure,” Keith logically added, voice muffled, and _holy brush pens_ , was that a blush he was trying to hide behind his palms?

Shiro nodded. “Understandable. Now, before we start, let’s move to a warmer room. The model sketching class is cancelled, so we can use that one.”

They moved to a room filled with chairs arranged in circular motion around a bed for models. The new room was much warmer, drawing content sighs from the three. Lance and Keith took a seat that faced the horizontal part of the bed and whiteboard. Both started to take off their coats, but paused halfway when they saw their teacher doing the same.

It wasn’t a strip tease. There was nothing sensual about it at all. But once their eyes landed, they couldn’t look away. It was like pulling off a silk sheet to reveal a brand new sexy Rolls Royce. Shiro wore skin tight black turtleneck, which showed, no, enhanced his ripe muscles. They teetered dangerously between well-built and overly-built. It was simply the perfect balance from head to toe. Like the 3D models Hunk had on his computer for reference.

Lance started to see why Allura chose this class for them.

Keith unconsciously knocking his chair back brought them back to reality. They quickly took their jackets off and sat down, avoiding to look into each other’s eyes or Shiro.

“Alright, here’s what we are going to do over the next twelve weeks…”

Shiro started to explain what they were going to learn, his method of teaching, and what he wouldn’t teach. Lance struggled to listen to him but in the end gave up when he saw Keith taking notes on auto-pilot. He’d just swallow his pride later and enjoy staring at Shiro now.

“With that said, I’m going to name all muscles human have and explain the functions. You don’t need to take notes, because I’m going to give you the handouts later. For now just try understanding as much as you can, because you’re going to have to remember this later.”

Lance nodded before his mind could finish processing the words completely. Shiro nodded in satisfaction and continued.

“Very well. Let us start from the neck. This one here—“ Shiro bared his neck, looked to the side, and started to trace the diagonal muscle that stretched from underneath his ear to the top of his collarbone. “—is called _sternocleidomastoid_. It’s a mouthful, and other muscles will be as long-named, but if you break the words down, it will be pretty easy to remember.”

Shiro started to explain where the word came from, but Lance was not listening. He was busy fending off his dirty mind which was relentlessly supplying imaginations of him burying his face to that neck and trace that sterno-whatever muscle with his tongue. It was probably a little difficult since Shiro’s slight man-boobs would get in the way.

Not far to his left, Keith swallowed his own spit.

Lance missed the name of the shoulder muscle and its explanation as he gathered himself together. Imagining Allura’s spartan punishment seemed to do the trick and he was back to reality.

Only to be kicked back to fantasy land viciously.

“Here’s _deltoid_ the muscle where most people make mistake when drawing. You see it’s shaped like a reversed triangle, and the edge is located at the side—“ Shiro made a pinching motion to trace that very visible ‘v’ line on his upper arm’s top, “—but most people draw it at the front to show it. Even if you forget everything I am going to teach you, please remember this one fact. It’s my personal pet-peeve to drop works with this mistake.”

Lance and Keith glanced at each other and nodded. Even if they had to work overtime and sacrifice their holiday and sleep to fix all six episodes, they’d do it. They wordlessly and solemnly swore.

“Now these are the pectoral muscles.” Shiro’s hand was over his left breast. Lance almost died. Keith wore an expression similar to a cat ready to jump a mouse. Needless to say, Klance team was mesmerized and no longer thought about learning. They were reduced to starving lions, devouring Shiro’s muscles with their eyes and hungry for the next meat.

It was when Shiro was explaining about inguinal crease[1] that Keith voiced his first question.

“Can you repeat that?” _Wha—_ “I want to know the exact location where it starts. It’s hard to see with the pants getting in the way.”

Holy shit Keith. That was straight up sexual harassment!

Lance wanted to scream, but Shiro innocently nodded and did as requested. This time he lowered his belted pants a bit to show those enticing v-line beneath the abs.

 _Dear mighty lions_ , Lance wanted to howl. He never felt so thankful to Keith that he wouldn’t mind kissing his boots—or lips.

Alright. He **really** needed Jesus now. Or Buddha. Or Muhammad. Or whatever that can make him think straight again. His logic and moral level must be critically low if he could think kissing Keith counted as okay.

There was a knock on the door.

Lance held back a groan while Keith glared at the door. Who dared interrupting them?

A tiny boy (or girl?) thrusted their head inside and spoke.

“Dad just called. He said we had to close the school and go home now or risk spending a night here.”

Lance wouldn’t mind that, but Shiro clearly did. “Got it. Thanks, Pidge.”

The door closed and Shiro turned to address his students.

“Alright, it seems like we have to end our session early today. I will make the next class longer to make up for it.”

Usually Lance would cry at that but today he nodded, a little too enthusiastically.

“Here’s your hand out. Make sure to review what I taught you today and read it before you come to the next class. If you can get it memorized by then, we can start on the back muscles.”

Back side. Right. “Consider it done,” Lance said, finding his confidence back. Shiro smiled at that. It was official: Takashi Shirogane owned them. He had his fingers wrapped around their little hearts and they were happy to give him.

“That is good to hear. Memorizing muscle is important for drawing, and the long names are intimidating. But rest assured, you two will grow to love muscles when you’re done with this class, just like the students before you.”

Yeah. Lance could see why.

“You still have long way to go,” Keith said once Shiro left the classroom to help Pidge closing down.

“Like you are not,” Lance shot back heatedly.

Keith only raised his eyebrow and proceed to dictate all muscles Shiro talked in the class. Lance cross checked with the handout and to his dismay, Keith got all of them right.

“Damned prodigy,” Lance cursed under his breath.

Keith shrugged. “Not really. Unlike you I actually pay attention.”

“How?” Lance blurted out before his brain could filter it.

Keith looked away, but Lance could still see pink on his cheeks. When he finally spoke it was so soft that Lance almost missed it. “I want to memorize it so I can draw it later.”

Lance gaped. Did Keith just implied that his quick memorization came from pure fanboy power? Genius bastard.

Needless to say, their progress to drawing anatomically correct animation skyrockets. Allura was happy and they got praises from their team. Naturally they all wanted to know how Lance and Keith achieved that, but since Allura didn’t want to pay for everyone’s school fee, Lance and Keith were forced to teach them. They were not as good as Shiro, but Lance was surprised that he actually could explain very well. And Keith—well, he wasn’t a bad model. Actually, as good as Shiro, just, different body type. Thanks to that realization, Lance found himself sneaking a peek every time his mind wanders or when he thought Keith was not looking.

And no, Lance wasn’t being stalker-ish at all. Especially compared to Keith who kept asking him to take off his pants to show his “well defined leg muscles” whenever he couldn’t figure out how to draw one. Lance had photographed it with Coran’s help for his own reference (because yes, his leg muscles were very easy to draw despite the lack of bulk), but Keith refused to use it, insisting that it was better to look at the real thing.

Well, Lance thought as he caught himself staring at Keith’s upper arms, he couldn’t argue with that.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Google inguinal crease and your welcome.
> 
> Hi there! Thank you for reading “Fundamentals of Muscle Drawing”! I hope you enjoyed it. It was based on my experience at a trial class for anatomy drawing. And Shiro’s last line about growing to love muscles is a quote from that class’ teacher. The rest of animator/studio/art stuff was something I pulled from my limited knowledge, so forgive me if I got facts wrong. 
> 
> Now for those who read/follow my other story, “Lord Zarkon is Never Ready” on my tumblr, I might not update next week because of season 2. I’m practically rolling around on my bed, waiting in suspense and can’t concentrate because the place I’m watching it on still doesn’t have the rest of the episode (FYI no spoilers in the comment section please). Not that I blame Netflix, because border and territory business is very messy. I hope they will make it available on Asia so I can contribute (or buy the DVD/blu-ray!)


End file.
